Luther College welcomes Nebraska Wesleyan to the Iowa Intercollegiate Athletic Conference as the conference expands to nine member institutions. In a press conference Monday, July 20, IIAC officials announced that Nebraska Wesleyan University accepted an invitation to join the conferencebeginning the 2016-17 academic year.

The Weston Noble Alumni Choir, with several combinations of parents and children, siblings and cousins, will gather in Decorah starting July 26 for its ninth and final reunion and concert. The choir, representing Luther classes 1949 to 2013, will meet for five days of intense rehearsals culminating in the final reunion concert that features a performance by award winning tenor Eric Cutler, Luther class of 1999.

In recent years, the United States has experienced a surge of immigration from young Latinos unaccompanied by parents or guardians. Emily Alcock, Luther College junior of Decorah, Iowa, is researching the ways in which media outlets sometimes portray these immigrants through lenses of racism and harmful stereotypes.

In order to create a more complete picture of Malala Yousafzai, Keziah Grindeland, Luther College senior of Salem, Oregon, is researching how western media narratives of Yousafzai compare to how she understands her own religious identity.

Jon Christy, Luther College director of assessment and institutional research, is one of 28 administrators in higher education selected in a nationwide search by the Council of Independent Colleges to participate in a year-long Senior Leadership Academy.

Green, Luther College director of web content, wrote "Her Lost Year: A Story of Hope and a Vision for Optimizing Children's Mental Health," to tell her family's journey of surviving a year of modern psychiatry and explore how people might live differently to promote mental health for all people.

Whether building a pyramid or designing an engine, friction has long been a prominent factor in human innovation. Inventors must take into account the effects of friction on materials. Jesse Hitz Graff, Luther College senior of Winona, Minnesota, is experimenting with aluminum oxide to determine how the compound fares when friction is taken into account in certain technologies.

Using the method of text painting, Pablo Gómez-Estévez, Luther College sophomore of Santiago, Dominican Republic, will compose a piano suite for the children's book he wrote last summer titled "Lulito."

When a large enough portion of a community becomes vaccinated and eliminates the risk of a disease outbreak, that community gains herd immunity. John Doorenbos, Luther College senior from Grinnell, Iowa, has been selected to do collaborative research over the summer to formulate a mathematical model to understand what proportion of individuals in a community need to be vaccinated in order to gain herd immunity. His research focuses on how the particular structure of the community affects the proportion of immune individuals required.